


V. Chicken - Twist

by 56leon



Series: 2018 Inktober Prompts / Fictober Fills [5]
Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Chickens, Gen, Killing, Kiril had two days to write non-angsty stuff, Mercy Killing, back to your regularly scheduled bullshittery, debatably a
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 22:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16206926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/56leon/pseuds/56leon
Summary: Inktober/Fictober Day 5. Chicken.Two scenes.In the first, Therion's father teaches him how to kill a chicken.In the second, Darius teaches him how to kill something else.





	V. Chicken - Twist

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I could have done something CUTE and FLUFFY, but we all know I'm a trash monster with a desire to write trash monster fanfic.
> 
> (Tomorrow will be cute, hopefully. I don't know how I could possibly fuck up 'drooling'.)

##  I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.

##                                                       -Jean-Michel Basquiat

* * *

One of the only memories Therion has of his father is being taught how to kill. It's before he loses his family, before he loses his  _ home, _ back when they still have a humble abode with enough business to be happy. Maybe not rich, but  _ happy. _

Their business, however, is not something that most would remember fondly. His father was a butcher, and they owned their own animals. There’s a cruel irony to Therion’s name, he realizes in retrospect, but that’s secondary to the lessons that his father had taught him within the short time that they spent together before his passing. How to sneak up on an animal, how to handle a knife, how to pay respects.

Of course, how to kill. It’s a sunny day, but they don’t do it outside, the first time. It’s in the kitchen with a sedated chicken in Therion’s small, child-sized hands, unsure what to do but knowing that being rough with a life can do bad things to it.

Those bad things are what his father urge him to do, and he doesn’t know why. It’s bad to hurt people, that’s one of the first lessons that any child ever learns, and yet his father wants him to hurt this bird for god knows what reason. “I......I don’t know what to do.” His voice is small, not yet hardened from thievery or betrayal, and confused. “What do I do?”

“Twist, son.”

He does, and the chicken convulses. His heart lurches when he finally feels the body in his hands go limp, but his father simply takes it from him and lays it on the board. “You did good,” he remembers those words faintly, but the next clear as day. “Remember that feeling, okay? That's a good feeling.”

Tears prick seven-year-old his eyes as he speaks. “It didn't feel good,” he remembers saying, clutching the edge of the table with small, now bloodstained, hands. “Why is it a good feeling if it doesn’t feel good?”

“Because it reminds you that doing that thing isn’t good,” his father replies as he pulls the feathers out of the chicken. Therion’s not watching, but he’s seen him do it before. After the bird was already dead. “We do it because we have to, and to live, we have to do some bad things. That’s what makes us feel bad. But if you can live without having to do the things that make you feel bad, then you should.”

Therion barely understands, but he thinks he does. Just a little. Later in life, he might understand it more intimately, realize that there’s humanity in keeping that disgust at death, and that not everybody still has that humanity intact, but for now......for now, it’s a lesson in restraint.

For now, it’s all the death that young Therion has on his hands.

* * *

 

It’s five years later, and Therion feels sick to his stomach. In front of him is a familiar face, gagged and hogtied. His name escapes Therion’s memory, only that he looks familiar and Darius is standing over him with one foot on his side. “Idjit snitched on us to the Ciannos,” he snorts, kicking him. The man yelps, but other than that is unable to reply with actual words. “Ya know what to do, right?”

“No,” Therion replies lamely, because it’s the truth, but he does have a good idea what Darius is planning, and it’s  _ not _ a good idea. “Listen, we can just teach him a lesson, right? It’s not like the Ciannos will actually-”

Darius cuts him off, not with a sound but with a look. “We’re  _ wanted, _ partner. Ya don’t think he’s gettin’ a cut from rattin’ us out? The only thing he should be gettin’ is what he deserves.” He pulls out a dagger and, in one quick motion, stabs it straight through the man’s chest, shallow enough to not his the heart but more than enough to hurt as though it had. There’s a single moment of shock on the man’s face that seems to stretch into an eternity, before muffled scream of pain tears through the gag. “Aw shaddup, you idjit.” Darius kicks him again, which only causes another pained groan to erupt from him, followed by smaller whimpers. “Listen, Therion. Partner. Ya gotta learn how to do this before the Ciannos end up doin’ it to you, okay? It ain’t like he’s innocent either. If it weren’t for him, we’d’ve gotten off scott-free.”

“Darius-” He tries to talk again, but Darius is good at controlling him. Too good, he would think in the future, but right now he only quiets and listens.

“Listen. I know it’s hard the first time, but you gotta.  _ We _ gotta. Okay? It’s just like.....just like a chicken.”

Therion’s mind flashes back, back to a brightly lit kitchen and a lesson that has taken years to sink in, and he swallows thickly.  _ To live, we have to do some bad things. _ This is what it is, Therion tries to reason. To stop this man from ruining them any further, to stay away from the Ciannos as long as possible, to do something as simple as stay alive......

The dagger is right in his chest, and as Therion grips the handle, he thinks that waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel must be more unbearable than the thought that the end is there at all.

He squeezes his eyes shut, turns away, and  _ twists _ . He twists and twists and doesn't stop until he can tell, even without looking, that the deed is done. His hands are shaking and his breathing is shallow, but it's over. It's over.

Darius grins and kicks the body, and Therion tries to reason with himself even though what is possibly the only moral bone left in his body wants to scream the opposite. This isn't.....it's not. But it has to be. For Therion to stay sane, it has to be.

“Good job, partner. We'll make a bandit outta ya yet.”

_ Just like a chicken. _


End file.
